My favourite roads for bike rides are low traffic rural roads. As a cyclist I’m probably not alone in this preference. But one of my biggest challenges as a cyclist living car-free in a major city is getting to these types of roads without spending hours riding through the suburbs. In the interest of helping other Toronto cyclists, I’ll post some of my favourite routes on this blog.

During our first family bike tour last year we discovered an excellent shortcut out of the Toronto: Rouge Hill GO Station. It offers easy access to the waterfront trail, saving you a long slog eastbound through Scarborough and, as I later discovered, it also offers a short 8 km route to rural roads north of the city.

There is one downside, however. The major issue for me is that the first Lakeshore East GO Train to leave Union Station on Saturdays, Sundays and holidays is at 7:13. This gets you to Rouge Hill by about 7:42. I wish there was a 6:13 train as I would prefer to get an earlier start.